Brooks Brothers Blog Review - Of Rogues and Gentlemen
Hello.
This is Antonio over at Real Men Real Style.
And today Iím going to be talking about Of Rogues and Gentlemen.
Now, if you havenít heard of this, this is Brooks Brotherís new blog.
It just came out.
And so, itís expected that their blog is going to be a little bit rough.
And Iím going to give you my first impressions of the blog.
I am a fan of theirs over at Facebook.
And I believe itís me along with almost 30,000 other people.
So, that was where I saw the introduction.
Also Chris Hogan, over at Off the Cuff, he tweeted this.
And I saw that tweet.
And so I came over.
And first impressions are, I have seen this before, or so I felt.
Actually, the way their logo was set-up and with the wooden background, I really felt
ñ and I have to admit, my first impression was I was a bit underwhelmed.
I kind of expected a bit more from Brooks Brotherís.
Again, you know, this is an early layout.
And I expect them to change this.
But I guess I was just expecting a bit more from such an iconic company compared with
Mr. Porter and some of the other launches I have seen.
You know, perhaps, this is more of a soft launch.
You know, Mr. Porter put out tons of information.
Now, the most interesting thing for me is actually to look at their blogroll and to
see who in a sense ñ I always look at people or especially with Brooks Brotherís, theyíre
going to be very careful about who they link to.
They probably even had a discussion about this.
And I saw a lot of the usual suspects here ñ A Continuous Lean, Alan Flusserís BeSpeak.
It was interesting they actually link over to Esquire and GQ, which makes sense.
Esquire ñ good, solid relationship theyíve had with Brooks Brotherís for, you know,
almost 100 years.
And then GQ, that one was understandable.
How to Talk to Girls at Parties, that one was a bit different.
I was very happy to see the Art of Manliness here.
As many of you know, I write with Brett over at The Art of Manliness and very, very cool.
The Style Blogger, that one was a bit unexpected but not really, because Dan is doing a great
job over there.
So, the Style Blogger, thatís great to see them there.
All right.
So, letís get back to ñ you know, I used the word underwhelmed, and I guess thatís
because I expect so much from Brooks Brothers.
And theyíve got that little, you know, their logo up here.
So, besides that ñ and if you go down and look at the Facebook page, that instantly
tells you that theyíre using, you know ñ obviously, 30,000 people havenít liked this
blog.
But if you look at the URL, blog.brooksbrothers.com, they are clearly part of Brooks Brothers.
And thatís probably the first thing I felt missing here is, you know, I didnít ñ theyíre
not really showing me any faces.
Iím seeing a lot of the models who Iím used to seeing or, you know, very attractive people.
And, you know, I understand with smaller companies ñ you know, over at A Tailored Suit, one
of the reasons you donít see, which is my custom clothier.
One of the reasons you donít see a lot of the faces is because, well, we use the same
models, which early on happen to meet me.
But I did that to try to appear bigger.
Well, Iím wondering why Brooks Brothers is ñ again, very early but letís ñ so, theyíve
got those categories up at the top.
This is click on The Clothes.
And The Clothes ñ actually, Iím going to click on This Look or open that link as well.
But The Clothes is where Iím going to start.
And hereís where they really do start to get into details.
They talk about the Story Super Pima, Suit Yourself Part One, Two, and Three.
Looking at the dates of these articles, you can tell that they really look ñ I mean,
this is a 2011 project, which is interesting because over at A Tailored Suit, almost ñ
gosh, itís almost been, almost four years.
You know, I have been working to build up a library ñ itís not blog-like because on
my stuff you canít leave comments but itís very interesting to see some of the bigger
companies coming in.
Now, Iím expecting to see Menís Wearhouse and JoS.A.Banks.
Iím not putting Brooks Brothers in that category but, you know, I was always surprise that
it took them this long to get into the game of providing information.
Okay.
So, I skipped over to The Look.
And this is apparently where you find your style and their style commandments and what
to wear.
Again, I didnít find this very original, because at a lot of the blogs theyíre already
linking to, theyíre already giving me the rules and the commandments and all that stuff.
So, they do talk about, you know, some great things.
They talk about the pleat versus front pleat debate.
Actually, I really liked this image that they used here.
Something a bit striking and different.
And you can tell by some of the writing that, obviously, itís Brooks Brothers ñ Yankees
versus Red Sox, Harvard versus Yale.
Obviously, that right there is telling me it is a Northeast United States orientation.
But then itís, you know, nothing really super deep, which Iím surprised.
And the other thing I kind of felt missing from Of Rogues and Gentleman is a personality.
Who is behind this?
Who are the people of Brooks Brothers?
I mean, I donít ñ who are Brooks Brothers?
So, little things like that.
It really is lacking right now are personality.
Suit Yourself Part One.
The content is good.
The advice is solid.
What I would expect from Brooks Brothers.
Itís just ñ I would like to see a bit more life to it.
Suit Yourself Part Two.
Again, they do a great job.
They have all ñ you know, I know having put information like this together, I always found
that my issue was finding the time and also, you know, getting the right pictures.
As a custom clothier, my stuff goes and I just donít carry a lot of inventory.
And so, Iím really surprised that they donít make better use of pictures.
All right.
Where are we at?
We are at The Answers.
So, this is where they put out questions.
This was an interesting one.
Posing for Posterity and they asked the question about the family portrait and they gave a
pretty solid answer.
And theyíve got the main pocket square.
Again, I can tell by the postings dates, this is March 1st, March 1st, March 1st, March
1st.
Obviously, theyíre not putting these ñ theyíve just ñ I mean, this thing probably went live
at the end of February.
And thatís when they probably started loading it with content.
Which nothing wrong with that, but it really does tell you, you know, when theyíve been
entering the game.
And this thing is new.
So, here we go into The Answers.
They talk about the pocket squares.
And see, hereís an example.
They go step one.
It could be laid out a bit better.
Itís not necessarily intuitive that thereís a slide show here.
All right.
And finally, they ñ well, not finally, the next section The Life.
Theyíve only got one article here, ìGive Me the Keys.î They talk about the Florida
Keys and Ernest Hemingway, which makes sense.
And I expect theyíre going to talk about more destinations and everything here.
And then weíve got The Man, which I donít know what this is.
But itís coming soon, so something to look forward to.
All right.
Well, letís go back.
Of Rogues and Gentlemen, Style Advice, Tips and Essentials for the Modern Man.
So, Iím going to give this a three out of five.
And itís not that this is bad.
I just ñ I guess, I have very high expectations for Brooks Brothers.
And I see thereís a lot of room for improvement.
Really, I would like to see more of the Brooks Brothers personality in this.
I feel itís trying to be too much to too many people.
Theyíre not really bringing a whole lot of unique ideas, which thereís nothing wrong
with imitation.
I look at this wood background and I have to admit, Iíve had a wood background on my
websites for almost four years.
The Art of Manliness has had a wood background for a couple of years.
Obviously, I didnít invent wood, so I own no monopoly to it.
But I donít know.
I guess, I just was expecting when I knew this was going to happen.
But I just thought that they would come out with something a bit stronger.
Again, itís an early one.
And I know that they are going to improve this.
And for that reason, you probably need to bookmark this.
Bookmark this blog and come back to it over the next few months and watch the changes.
The content is solid.
It comes from Brooks Brothers, so you know itís going to be.
But no, I would like to see them improve and take this to the next level.
This is Antonio Centeno with Real Men Real Style.
And I hope you enjoyed my review.
Take care.